Chapter 8 — Indiana Yearly Meeting Schism Documents

 Camping Out at the Borderland: Reflections on Life in a Liminal Time (Ruth 1: 1-14)

By Stephanie Crumley-Effinger

(Expanded from a message in Worship at West Richmond IN Friends Meeting, First Month 13, 2013)

As readers of this journal are aware, Indiana Yearly Meeting is in the process of a separation. This essay is meant to give you a glimpse into the experience of that process through the eyes of a participant in it who is also an active member of West Richmond Meeting. Members and attenders of West Richmond vary widely in our connection to and experience of Indiana Yearly Meeting. I speak from one (and only one) particular place in that range of relatedness and tell a small fraction of a long and complicated story. After becoming part of West Richmond Meeting, I also became very involved in the annual “family reunion” that is Indiana Yearly Meeting. But I hope that my words will also be useful for those for whom Indiana Yearly Meeting has no referent in experience, and for everyone in the range between us.

In choosing a spouse, most people do not focus on the extended family of which the beloved is a member. Similarly, in becoming part of a Friends Meeting, most people choose the local Meeting for itself and not because of the “extended family”/Yearly Meeting of which that local meeting is a member. It is true in Indiana Yearly Meeting as in other yearly meetings. And it is an issue in the current situation of West Richmond Meeting (and a number of other monthly meetings that have long been part of IYM), and relevant to our current “Twilight Zone” status of being on our way out of Indiana Yearly Meeting.

As a seeker in my early 20’s, in 1976 I discovered in West Richmond Friends a Meeting that was both clear in its Quaker Christian identity and widely welcoming of my spiritual searching, questions, and the deepening connection to Friends that had been nurtured through my years at Earlham College as a student. West Richmond was in 1976 (and is today) as former pastor from Charles Woodman described it in 1940, “. . . a Meeting diverse enough to represent many opinions in the realm of social problems and personal religious belief, but a Meeting big enough to keep all these differences under the shelter of the divine love; and this is the open secret of this Meeting’s unity.” The Meeting currently identifies itself with this mission statement: “As a Christian Quaker community, we seek to discover God’s truth, proclaim God’s love, and live our faith.” (http://www.westrichmondfriends.org/)

I first attended annual sessions of Indiana YM in the summer of 1978. Despite my having had almost two years of involvement with West Richmond Meeting, this reunion of its extended family was foreign territory. It was fascinating, exciting, terrifying. I experienced huge theological culture shock, finding myself in a minority, feeling at sea amid the conservative majority. They resoundingly espoused evangelism and altar calls, holiness living and revival services – practices almost completely unknown to me. There were significant differences in language for religious experience, approaches to the Bible, worship style, hymns, and norms. People were expected to have a vivid testimony to a distinct salvation experience: to be able to name the place and date of their conversion to Christianity, the evangelist who was leading the service, the circumstances of becoming convicted of their sinfulness, and details of their experience of release from guilt and shame that came through their acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

The dominant theology is exemplified by “Victory in Jesus”, one of the many rousing hymns that I, although being brought up a hymn-singing member of the Reformed Church in America and then joining music-loving West Richmond Friends, had never heard before:

 I Heard an Old, Old Story

How a Saviour Came from Glory

How He Gave His Life on Calvary

To Save Someone like Me.

 

I Heard about His Groaning,

Of His Precious Blood’s Atoning.

Then I Repented of My Sin

And Won the Victory.

 

Oh, Victory in Jesus,

My Saviour Forever

He Sought Me and He Bought Me

With His Redeeming Blood

 

He Loved Me ‘Ere I Knew Him

And All My Love Is Due Him

He Plunged Me to Victory

Beneath the Cleansing Blood . . .

(Eugene Monroe Bartlett, Sr., 1939,

http://breadsite.org/lyrics/637.htm)

 

Over the 35 years since, I have attended most sessions of IYM and of its annual gatherings for pastors, served on committees, been recorded as a minister of the Gospel ,and developed many friendships with Quakers with whom I, and the majority of my Meeting, have significant differences. This set of relationships has nurtured and developed me in significant ways. I have been loved, cared-about, and prayed-for by IYM folks in deeply meaningful ways, and have loved, cared about and prayed for them. Our kids grew up together at Junior Yearly Meeting and Pastors’ Short Course children’s programs. We have seen each other through good times and difficult ones.

IYM has also been the source of some of the hardest experiences of my life. From 1986-2000 I was responsible for relations between Earlham College and the yearly meeting, and I was frequently a lightning rod for conflict between the two. More recently, an IYM pastor told me that my theology was an abomination and I was not fit to teach in a seminary. At annual sessions in the summer of 2010, I was in tears after awful things were said about West Richmond Meeting by the evening speaker. I realized that my relationship with IYM was the spiritual version of an abused person who keeps being wooed back by loving treatment, only to be beaten-up yet again.

And yet – there was always the sense that in our differences in IYM we made each other stronger by challenging the tendencies of each end of the YM to get off-balance and helping each other to be more whole and faithful. Looking closely at the Faith and Practice of Indiana YM:

(http://iym.org/site/cpage.asp?sec_id=180010756&cpage_id=180033491),

one can see an interweaving of our different approaches and viewpoints. For over a hundred years, since the holiness movement and the fundamentalist/modernist controversies that had a powerful impact on IYM, we have found ways to work with these differences, or to put our attention elsewhere, on joint ministries and projects, common needs and concerns.

 I still believe that this creative tension could have been maintained if the more conservative part of the YM had not felt that it could no longer in good conscience be affiliated with the more progressive part of the body that includes West Richmond.

But many, many of the more conservative majority of IYM Friends hold that West Richmond Meeting stepped over the line with our June 2008 minute welcoming, affirming, and including lesbian and gay people to be members and leaders

(http://www.westrichmondfriends.org/affirming.htm). In response to the firestorm of conflict that gathered, the separation is in process, through which our Meeting, along with several others, are currently in a Quaker “no-man’s-land” with regard to larger affiliation.

In April of 2011, I was one of two people on the progressive end of the YM appointed to a seven person task force charged to examine the conflict and recommend to the sessions in late July a way to move forward. Early on, several task force members, like the yearly meeting Ministry and Oversight Committee before them, urged that West Richmond  change the minute so the problem would go away. Our Meeting did not feel clear to do this, and the discussions got underway in earnest.

Surprisingly, serving on that body was one of the most meaningful experiences of my years in IYM. As the seven of us gathered around a table, we spoke directly to one another about issues on which we differed, asked questions back and forth, confronted face to face, and considered IYM’s historical dynamics. Every few weeks we would meet for worship, discussion, analysis, and pondering of possible responses to the conflicts engulfing the body. The differences among us became even clearer as we discussed a range of issues, some closely connected to the West Richmond minute, such as ways of interpreting the Bible, and others less so, such as worship style.

Having considered many and varied possible avenues and the likely consequences of each, we came to focus on the importance of each local Meeting being faithful, and whether the least destructive way would be for the yearly meeting to divide rather than continue in conflict and chaos, with congregations from the majority leaving because they could not conscientiously remain in a body with West Richmond. Some of us had tremendous reluctance, some sad hopefulness, others eagerness toward that idea. This particular meeting was lengthy, and near the end we each were asked to speak. When it came my turn, I named my deep reluctance to join in such a recommendation, a sense that it was the least destructive of the possibilities before us, and my fervent hope that, when the yearly meeting gathered in July, God would lead us in a different direction that none of us could yet imagine.

I went on to say, “I know that most of you are certain that God will someday judge me for being supportive of lesbian and gay people. But I am convinced that God will hold you accountable for the damage being done to untold numbers of families and individuals by your negative attitudes to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and same-sex relationships.” As I spoke, in my mind I was seeing ESR students and alumnae/i who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender – people gifted in ministry, who are loving family members and committed spouses, who have to overcome such destructive and deforming messages they receive from the church. It was a profound moment of no longer holding back as I had so often done over the years by saying things gently or refraining from speaking for fear of the consequences. It was an experience of grace in which God gave me bold faithfulness and courage to “speak truth to power”.

There is much more to the story – lots of chaos and conflict, many Friends at this [progressive] end of the YM furious at the task force, (and at the two of us from the more progressive meetings for not seeking to stop the proposal for division), turbulent sessions of the yearly meeting in responding to the question of staying together or dividing, the ultimate decision to separate, and the anger and grief that continue. Those stories are for another day.

We have used a number of metaphors for the reconfiguration/separation, particularly that of divorce. One Friend likened us to “conjoined twins” whose continued viability is threatened by staying joined as one body, but who have to be separated carefully through intricate surgery so that both can live.

So, I turn to the Bible passage of Ruth 1: 1-14, which I believe speaks to our condition. Naomi and her husband Elimelech, with their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, had left their home in Bethlehem in Judah during a famine, finding in Moab a place where there was food, although usually the Hebrews and Moabites were bitter enemies. We often hear about such a refugee situation, caused by famine or violence or other disaster, in our time also, but most of us reading this have not experienced it ourselves.

After a number of years of living in Moab, more disaster struck the family – first Elimelech died. Then, after Naomi’s two sons had married women of Moab, each of the sons died as well. After some time, the bereaved Naomi discovered that Judah no longer had a famine and decided to return to her homeland.

Her daughters-in-law accompanied Naomi for the first part of her journey. Some commentators note that due to rules of hospitality of their day they would have seen Naomi to the border of Moab. But then their relationship, and perhaps the emotions of what they had been through together after the deaths of their husbands, caused Orpah and Ruth to be reluctant to part from Naomi. She argued with them, pointing out that, as women without the protection of a man, their best interests lay in returning to their parents and seeking new husbands to provide a home and children. Eventually Orpah was persuaded, and with tears and embraces, she turned back toward Moab, while Ruth held onto her mother-in-law there at the border, facing toward the unknown land of Judah.

I deliberately did not include the famous later verses of Ruth’s promises to Naomi, often used in weddings. We and the other Friends who are no longer welcome in IYM have not yet made a commitment to one another.

I want us to sit with the three women at that very moment of Naomi and Ruth weeping with Orpah and with sad hearts seeing her turn toward Moab. They are our sisters in the Spirit, as we at West Richmond Meeting stand at the borderland of Indiana Yearly Meeting, of which we will no longer be a part, and the unknown future of a potential body with Friends who like us are spiritual refugees from IYM. And, those who are the Orpah figures, our brothers and sisters who remain in Indiana YM, also grieve – as much as some of us may doubt it. They grieve that we could not do what they are convinced is “the right thing” and submit to a stricter IYM so that we could all stay together.

One of the Friends with whom I shared the January 13, 2013 message on which this article is based, wrote back asking, “Who is Ruth and who is Orpah? Is IYM Moab? or is IYM Judah?” I responded that one of the challenges of drawing on scripture analogically, or of using metaphor, is that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between a current situation and the text or metaphor one is employing. I hope that both sets of Meetings (those that will remain in IYM and those who will no longer be part of it) will “travel to Judah and dwell there” – will attend to and obey Divine Guidance, follow Christ in faithfulness, learn to be the beloved community in ways that our toxic relating has been handicapping.

Life at this border is chaotic in some ways, and calm in others. When we gather at Meeting on a typical Sunday, things do not seem different. But I am very aware that in visiting another Meeting, when during the introductions I would usually say “Stephanie Crumley-Effinger, West Richmond Meeting, Indiana Yearly Meeting”, I can’t say that final part. It is no longer the case (although the actual separation will not be finalized until July 2013 at IYM sessions.) And there is as of yet no affiliation to name after “West Richmond Meeting”.

On January 27, 2013 approximately 120 Friends gathered at Richmond First Friends Meetinghouse to begin to develop a new association. Writing about that event, Margaret Fraser described eloquently her experience of us:

. . . an image is coming to me of having been in a catastrophic event. It is as if my home, along with others in the neighborhood, has been destroyed. We are traumatized, in occasional disbelief that it could have happened. With repeated realization come unexpected tears. But as we look around, we see that we are all alive, all safe. We can’t rebuild in exactly the same place, but we have been given land and materials to build a new community. Most of us have not built before. We simply lived in our old houses. So, we are going to have to identify gifts and skills that exist among us, and many of us are going to learn new skills.

Just over a year ago, I visited Greensburg, Kansas, which had been flattened by a tornado. Since the old town had been built, new ecological awareness has developed, affecting architecture, building materials, scale and webs of connection. While some may have wanted the rebuilt community to look like the old one, most knew that innovation offered the best opportunity for healing.

So here we are. A little shaky, but wearing new hard hats and work boots, on a giant Habitat site, ready to join a crew to build the structures for our community, and to build community itself in a more intentional way. We have friends around the world praying for us and cheering us on. We will tread on each other’s toes — it’s a good thing about the work boots. In our clumsiness, we may hammer our own thumbs, or say things we regret. But if we keep our eyes on the Source of our faith, on why we are doing the work, and end each workday with laughter and gratitude and forgiveness, I think it will be just fine.  

(http://yearlymeetinga.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/a-new-association-is-born/)

The day after that meeting, over email came the late January edition of The Communicator, the biweekly IYM newsletter, reprinted elsewhere in this issue of Quaker Theology, containing the item about the Executive Committee retreat. It took my breath away. (And I imagine it was even worse for those who were/are more opposed to the separation than I ultimately came to be.) It came across as the aggressors/victors rejoicing about the split. This rubbed salt in the wounds, reopening them just as they are beginning to heal. I return to the analogy of the person who reluctantly assented to a divorce because their spouse was dead set against the marriage continuing — it was as if the separated spouse took the kids on a vacation, then wrote about what a terrific time they had and how wonderful it was to be just them without you. It throws the discarded spouse back into the rage, abandonment, etc., that s/he has been working hard to overcome and heal.

It is also painful to see that the IYM website currently describes as “Meetings who are in the process of leaving” those of us who did not choose “B” when we were required to decide between “B” and “not-B” –

(http://iym.org/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=180039785&sec_id=180010756). I am reminded of my mother’s situation 30 years ago when my pastor father decided to end their marriage. Since one person cannot make a marriage work if the other is unwilling, she reluctantly agreed to a divorce. But because they lived in a parsonage, it was she who had to find a new home. Could she fairly have been described as “leaving” my father? I think not! We at West Richmond, New Castle First Friends, West Elkton, etc., were faced with a union that we could not make work when the conservative Meetings became unwilling to be in it with us, and reluctantly stood aside or agreed to a divorce. And thus, we are the ones being left, rather than “leaving” Indiana Yearly Meeting. I ask that we be described as “Meetings who will no longer be part of Indiana Yearly Meeting” rather than as “Meetings who are in the process of leaving IYM”.

I am hopeful about the potential for a life-giving future for those who remain as Indiana Yearly Meeting, those of us who are coalescing as a new association, and the meetings who will be independent.

When the group gathered on January 27, I felt led to be present as a prayerful observer and came early to settle into that role. Someone was needed to sit at the welcome table with name tags and the sign-up sheet for contact information, and I volunteered for the task. It was wonderful to see people as they came in, bearing food for the pitch-in dinner that began our gathering, variably excited, hopeful, curious, uncertain, open. It was a joy to experience a sense of promise throughout that evening. Recalling the words of a Friend who also has endured much challenge in our years in IYM, “I hope before I die to be part of a yearly meeting where I don’t have to watch my back,” I am glad that such is underway. We have a long way ahead of us, much discernment to be done and much healing awaiting. But we are underway.

We stand in a liminal time, at a threshold and border. Here we are, and it is going to be a while before we know who all “our folks” will be, what is our new Quaker surname and extended family. The future of our wider relationship is uncertain, but there is no turning back. We stand with our foremothers Naomi and Ruth, both to grieve our losses and to trust that God goes before us into this unknown future and will accompany and lead us each step of the way.

 

 

             From the Indiana Yearly            
Meeting Communicator,

January 30, 2013

Good Morning,

The IYM Executive Committee met together for a retreat on January 19. One of the highlights was a conversation about the strengths of IYM. Here is a brief summary of that discussion:

1. We enjoy a greater theological unity in IYM now than any of us have ever experienced. We have reaffirmed our high regard for the Bible and the centrality of Jesus Christ, as well as our understanding of yearly meeting authority.
2. Rather than competing visions, we now have a clear sense of mission.
3. We are blessed with committed, biblical leaders and an organization with a rich heritage and the current capacity to continue to serve our constituency well. Valuable programs are already in place to support pastors, minister to youth, and serve as a basis for continuing Hispanic outreach. While the size of our yearly meeting is decreasing due to reconfiguration, those gathered shared a sense of optimism and hope as we considered the days ahead. Many of us regard the successful reconfiguration of IYM to be a miracle and hope to build on this miracle to move forward.

We will have to learn how to provide important services while operating on a smaller budget, but the Executive Committee is not recommending any sweeping changes at this time. It is encouraging that most of our meetings regularly pay 100% of their annual assessments to IYM, and in 2012 the number of meetings fully supporting IYM actually increased.

We expect good days ahead for our yearly meeting as we seek to be in one place, in one accord.

– Doug Shoemaker

 

 

Remarks for IYM Representative Council, 9-29-2012

Thomas Hamm

The Task Force finds itself in the position of recommending a way forward that probably no one really wants, that its most enthusiastic supporters accept, at best, with resignation and sadness. Yet of the options that we have considered, it still appears to be the one that comes closest to honoring the consciences of the diverse Friends in Indiana Yearly Meeting.

We can debate how we came to be where we are. As an historian, I think that the roots of our current dilemma go back well over a century, when most American Friends went through the wrenching changes that created the pastoral system and programmed worship. Since then, I doubt that there has been a time when some divisions in the yearly meeting were not clear. This resulted in small separations in the 1870s and 1920s, and the occasional departure of individual monthly meetings over the course of the twentieth century, sometimes for another Friends body, sometimes simply affirming that their congregations had ceased to be Friends.

Now we are at a point where we have a formal proposal before us for a formal division, and we are far into a process to make that happen. It will not happen, however, unless today we approve taking the final steps. Here it is probably appropriate to review, briefly, the process we have followed. In the spring of 2011, the clerk formed a task force of seven members to consider the issues raised by the West Richmond minute. It concluded that the issues went deeper and presented four options at yearly meeting sessions: One, to acknowledge that Indiana Yearly Meeting is diverse, and that it should embrace a “big tent” identity. The second was that we should embark on a program of consistent and unvarying enforcement of the yearly meeting Faith and Practice. The third was some sort of censure of West Richmond. The last was to consider division and possible realignment, which the task force recommended. The yearly meeting agreed on a recommendation to monthly meetings to study these options and the recommendation of the task force. On October 1, 2011, after intense discussion, a called Representative Council approved moving forward with a fifth model, presented as follows:

Model Five – Deliberative/Collaborative Reconfiguration

1. We recommend that, on October 1, Friends of Indiana Yearly Meetingcommit ourselves to a yearlong process of seeking a future that honors each other’s consciences and understandings of scriptural guidance, and that is life-giving for all of our monthly meetings. This process would include (but not be limited to) the following elements:
2. The West RichmondWelcoming Minute is, in our opinion, but a symptom of deeper disagreements in the yearly meeting. One of these is the question of the yearly meeting’s authority over its monthly meetings. We ask Friends to discern whether they want to be part of a yearly meeting that, as our current Faith and Practice provides, has the power to set bounds and exercise authority over subordinate monthly meetings; or whether they wish to be part of a yearly meeting that is a collaborative association, with monthly meetings maintaining considerable autonomy and allowing great freedom in matters of doctrine.
3. A Monthly Meeting may choose to opt out of the early phase of this process and wait until the reconfiguration is underway before deciding the yearly meeting with which to affiliate. Depending on the outcome of the reconfigurationdiscussion, the yearly meeting of its preference may be largely the one in which it is currently located.
4. Inviting Westernand Wilmington Yearly Meetings to join in this process of discernment, with the potential for reconfiguring our three yearly meetings into two bodies per the above delineated kinds of yearly meetings.
5. A process for appointing a Task Force, representing the variety of perspectives and interests in Indiana Yearly Meeting, to carry out this discernment work, both within our yearly meeting and, potentially, with parallel bodies of either or both of the other two yearly meetings. It would include, but not be limited to the following responsibilities:
6. Maintaining valued relationships, both as the process unfolds and as yearly meetings are reconfigured
7. Clarifying a way to go about such a reconfiguration, including how to proceed if Western and Wilmington decline the invitation to join in this process
8. Determining how to share our responsibilities for and connections with Friends United Meeting, Whites, Friends Fellowship Community, and Quaker HavenCamp
9. Identifying and addressing legal implications, such as meetinghouse ownership

We offer this recommendation in the full knowledge that Friends have many sad feelings about Quaker separations in the past, and wishing to avoid the hostility and alienation that has rocked the Quaker community at such times (forms of which sometimes re-emerge these days when we experience our differences.) We have come to recognize that factors which enabled Indiana Yearly Meeting to succeed as “a big tent” fifty and more years ago are no longer present. With more convinced Friends (a good thing!) we have fewer family ties across meetings. Styles of worship vary widely from one congregation to another. Some of us identify closely with the wider Religious Society of Friends and sister peace churches, while others of us find our kindred spirits within the wider evangelical movement. Quarterly meetings have diminished and are much less effective in connecting Friends from different meetings.

We trust that there can be a healthy self-differentiation and movement into new forms of relationships that free each Meeting to be faithful to, and supported in, the leadings that they have.

The final minute of approval read as follows:

RC 11-14 Representative Council approved the recommendation of the Task Force to implement “Model Five,” emphasizing that each monthly meeting would be free to choose which yearly meeting it would affiliate with and that the process would create some opportunities for continuing fellowship.

At the November meeting of Representative Council, it was approved to place this process under the care of the seven Friends who had been part of the task force up that time, with provision for adding three who were perceived as being sympathetic to what we have labeled yearly meeting A. When Stephanie Crumley-Effinger had to resign because of illness, David Brindle replaced her, and I joined Doug Shoemaker as the co-convenor of the task force.

Over the next few months, the task force created two possible models of a yearly meeting; YM A, an association of monthly meetings with considerable autonomy; and Yearly Meeting B, one with power to set and enforce boundaries. These were distributed for comment. Based on those comments, and discussion in the committee, in May monthly meetings were asked to choose. Numbers are dangerous. As of the September 1 deadline, 51 monthly meetings had responded. Of those, 3 chose yearly meeting A; one chose A but under protest; 11 chose yearly meeting B without comment; 21 chose B with comments, either endorsing the Reconfiguration process or blaming West Richmond for the yearly meeting’s problems; 9 opposed or refused to participate in the process; 1 was unable to choose. Since September 1 we have received responses from a few more monthly meetings, all registering a preference for yearly meeting B. Let me acknowledge that different Friends might set up different categories, but, to me, the general picture is clear— most Friends are comfortable with, if often sad about, the reconfiguration process, but a significant minority have deep reservations.

It’s probably impossible for anyone involved at this point to step back and view events with complete detachment and objectivity. We perceive the stakes as being too high—we can’t feel detached when we perceive that things that we value, and love are threatened. I do not claim that every member of the task force shares every opinion that I am about to express. But I think that, taken together, they explain why we have reached what to many is a radical conclusion, and have continued to advocate it in the face of passionate criticism. The differences we saw as debilitating last year have become more apparent as we have discussed and debated reconfiguration. Let me list what I have seen.

The immediate issue at hand is, of course, the West Richmond welcoming minute. For some of us in Indiana Yearly Meeting, it is an intolerable departure from the clear teachings of Scripture. They would expel not only West Richmond but anyone who agrees with the West Richmond position; for others, it is, at best, a violation of a clearly stated position of the yearly meeting. They wonder why the yearly meeting has not taken more forceful action, and that includes some monthly meetings that are not enthusiastic about the idea of Reconfiguration. Others see the West Richmond minute as admirable, a guarded, nuanced affirmation of the dignity and value of all people. And between those two positions we find others—those who disagree with the West Richmond statement but do not see it as a reason for breaking fellowship, or those who accept, and regret, that it gives offense to many members of the yearly meeting, but who are confident that that will fade over time.

For many, this is an issue of Scriptural authority. For them, the Bible is absolutely clear on same-sex issues, and there is no room for disagreement, and, in some cases, no room in Indiana Yearly Meeting for those who challenge their interpretation. Others respond that they are as committed to the authority of Scripture as anyone, but that Friends can differ in their interpretation, and that understandings change over time.

Then we have the issue of time. For some Friends, the clock was set in 2008, when West Richmond first informed the yearly meeting of the approval of its statement. For them, four years is already too long to take to deal with this issue. Others argue that when the unity of the yearly meeting is at stake, we need to take the time necessary to preserve it.

We have also heard disagreements on the best body for dealing with the issue. It began under the care of Ministry and Oversight. Some see that as appropriate; there certainly was precedent. Others argue that the yearly meeting as a whole should have taken it up much earlier and deplore what they see as the tendency of the yearly meeting leadership to keep things in small groups rather than bringing the wisdom of the whole body to bear on problems.

Interconnected with this is disagreement over communication within the yearly meeting. A couple of years back, the yearly meeting established a Facebook page. Not surprisingly, it became a forum for discussion of yearly meeting issues, particularly, in the past year, Reconfiguration. Some see that as healthy and productive. Others deplore it as divisive and perhaps even insubordinate; one Friend remarked to me that it made him want to throw his computer out the window.

Disagreements on yearly meeting authority have also been prominent. Being human, we have an understandable tendency to read Faith and Practice selectively. Some of us, and, let’s admit it, often dictated by the particular issue, cite Section 108A: “The yearly meeting exists to provide order and to regulate its constituent bodies so that Friends may maintain a Christian faith and witness in a spirit of love and unity”; and l08B: “The Yearly Meeting has the power to decide Yearly Meeting policy and administration as provided by this Faith & Practice. It may counsel, admonish or discipline its Quarterly and Monthly Meetings.” Others point to Section 108C: “Subordination as used in this Faith & Practice does not describe a hierarchy but rather a means, under divine leadership of common protection between Indiana Yearly Meeting and its Quarterly Meetings and Monthly Meetings. . . . The Yearly Meeting recognizes the freedom of Monthly Meetings and the validity of their prophetic voices.” Some see in the issue before a clear case requiring regulation and discipline. Others view it as a case of a lonely prophetic voice exercising legitimate power. For me, the question of yearly meeting authority is probably more the issue than the West Richmond minute.

Questions of process and power have also become prominent. The yearly meeting clerk and superintendent have become the targets of criticism, probably voiced most bluntly by one Friend who said publicly that: “we have thrown Quaker process out the window.” Another sees the yearly meeting in the hands of a “monolithic executive committee.” One monthly meeting was certain that if we had acted with integrity at the October 1, 2011, meeting of the Representative Council, we would have stopped this process in its tracks. They see minorities being pushed aside by majorities. Some view the reconfiguration process as in reality a purge of relatively liberal meetings being pushed by a determined fundamentalist minority. Other Friends endorse the process, and, especially in the case of the Representative Council of October 1, 2011, are convinced that we were truly led by the Spirit in the conclusion we reached. The differences are clear, and I think that they go beyond arguing about whether the clerk correctly discerned the sense of the meeting. They involve different understandings of what the sense of the meeting is, and how Friends properly exercise power.

Some Friends have argued eloquently that separation is never the solution to a problem, that they are unwilling to add yet another chapter to the unhappy history of Quaker splintering. Here we face the reality that Friends always have seen unity as the goal of their processes. We also have to acknowledge that many Friends do not perceive Indiana Yearly Meeting as a body on the verge of splitting. Perhaps we all deserve some credit for trying to keep our differences at some level of mutual respect and civility, even if we have not always succeeded. Yet the basic disagreement remains. We have heard eloquent pleas for reconciliation. Yet the reality remains that reconciliation can take place in present circumstances only if one of two things happens, no matter what process we might establish. The first is that West Richmond would rescind the Welcoming Minute. They have been clear that they cannot in integrity do so, and a number of Friends support them in that understanding. The other possibility is that the yearly meeting would rescind its 1982 minute on homosexuality, or that it would decide that the West Richmond minute falls into the category of matters like outward sacraments where we have come implicitly, at least, to tolerate effective congregational autonomy. We have heard from many Friends that they cannot in good conscience do that. So, we come to the recommendation that is before us.

Recommendation from the Indiana Yearly Meeting Reconfiguration Task Force for Approval at a Called Meeting of the Representative Council 9th Mo. 29, 2012

1. IYM (the organization) will remain intact and those meetings choosing option Bwill continue to be part of this body. The attached statement of “Frequently Asked Questions” [Omitted here — Ed.] lays out how this will work. For the majority of Friends in IYM this will represent no organizational change, although the authority of the yearly meeting to hold its member meetings accountable will have been clearly affirmed.
2. Those meetings desiring a yearly meeting that allows for greater autonomy (option A) will be set off from IYM into a newly created “yearly meeting” or equivalent association. They will be released from obligations for 2013 assessments. Monthly meetings that wish to participate in this “setting off” shall inform the IYM office of this choice by 12/31/2012.
3. Monthly meetings that have not chosen between “YM A” and “YM B” by 12/31/2012 are asked to make a different choice: are they willing to affirm being part of a yearly meeting with authority as laid out in the “YM B” statement distributed earlier this year? If not, they will be released from the yearly meeting.
4. Monthly meetings that have not made a decision by 12/31/2012 about their future relationship with the yearly meeting will have a grace period until yearly meeting annual sessions in 2013 to do so. They will not be liable for assessment payments until a decision is made. If the decision is for B, then the monthly meeting will be responsible for retroactive payment of assessments. Members may complete terms of service as IYM committee members or officers but will not be eligible for reappointment.
5. The following financial arrangements will be put in place:
   1. The newly created yearly meeting or association will receive a proportional share of IYM’s liquid assets as of December 31, 2012, based on adult membership as of December 31, 2012, minus any unpaid assessments still owing.
   2. Monthly meetings choosing to leave IYM before the 2013 Annual Session will receive clear title to their properties, but with continuing obligations for any mortgages, unpaid assessments or other obligations to the yearly meeting.
   3. IYM will cover legal expenses up to $5,000 for obtaining quit claim deeds and the cost of creating a new 501 (c) (3) organization if desired.

This represents the best wisdom of the task force at present, and we commend it to your consideration.